Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Propertyfinder Blog

Propertyfinder has come out and announced a head on challenge to Rightmove quoting cheaper fees as their major usp and assault weapon.

Estate Agent Today has a number of comments and plugs supporting them and bemoaning Rightmove.

I like Gillian Kent and what she is trying to do with Propertyfinder, but as an earlier post of mine today indicated you have to engage your users as well as offering a good product. One look at the Propertyfinder blogs, outhere, show a lack of posts and the last CEO post back in January 2008.

Findaproperty.com rightly identified this area recently and now produce a good and interesting blog, which is aimed more at the punter. Globrix will also leap ahead now their blog is taking shape. Indeed, a fantastic product with a supporting engaging blog is getting closer to the premium package for agents.

That said, what we all (and there are so many now) have forgotten is the end user. Joe public doesn't want to read this blog for example and perhaps we should be concentrating our efforts on engaging the end user? We are all in pursuit of the agent which of course brings in revenue, but without the end user we are valueless.

I have written many times about the importance of agents writing blogs their customers may find useful and bending over backwards to engage the user. but it is not happening within the portals.

Perhaps this is the point many are missing in the ongoing Rightmove bashing. To be fair to rightmove (and I may be lynched for this) whilst they have alienated many agents they have improved the website and moreover have employed new design houses to improve their email marketing campaigns. These are much better now and plainly designed at cemented an already established brand within the mind of the user.

PS. If Propertyfinder want to buy this blog for its agent facing element my earlier offer of £5 million still stands.

2 comments:

I think it's really hard to get the blog thing right, do you aim it at agents/other techy people in property search/property crash spectators/your sites fans/general househunters??? It's hard to strike a balance between something that will be interesting for both agents and consumers. I used to comment more on the market, but now it's so doom and gloom day after day I've pretty much stopped doing a daily update of the latest depressing figures. I don't think people need another place to read it, and of course there's an element of not wanting to upset the agents...and I guyess there lies the problem. Bloggers in our sector are in an unusual situation of 'having to please' (to some extent) both agents and consumers...and in reality the two don't often read from the same page.

This is something we gave a lot of thought to before we launched our blog (and thanks for the positive comments!)

What we do is primarily aimed at engaging the end user and that's what we set out to achieve - there are, I think, other channels available to us as a business to engage with agents.

We do, however, cover agent news etc in the blog if we think it's interesting ... such as the recent piece about Alexander Boyes.

http://blog.findaproperty.com/buying-selling/keep-calm-carry-on/

On FindaProperty.com we have a separate editorial section for market news etc. This is also aimed at the end user but we also cover agent reports and regularly get comment from agents on various subjects(for How To Guides, news and the like)